“Lovely,” said Arthur.

“Everything looks wonderful, sir.” Laurent turned back to Jeremy. His cheeks were flushed. “You’re a lucky young man.”

Arthur pushed open the white door and held it as Laurent scooted forward. The panel closed behind Jeremy with a swoosh, and his eyes adjusted, yet again. Dimmer light. Soft, amber, caressing light.

Before him was a long hallway paneled in a golden, bird’s-eyed wood. Linenfold paneling, hand-carved, was topped by notched edging. Beneath his feet was carpeting of a deeper gold, plush as the seats of Arthur’s Lincoln. The ceiling was high, domed plaster, veneered with pale gold leaf.

Jeremy thought: A bird in a gilded cage.

Laurent led them up the muffled corridor. The air was warm, sweet with rosewater. The passageway terminated at massive double doors. Carved into the capstone were three letters in flowery script.

CCC

The year three hundred?

Something bygone and Soviet- was Arthur an unregenerate communist?

The thought amused Jeremy, but before he could speculate further, Laurent had thrown both doors open. He and Arthur flanked the doorway. Arthur’s long arm swooped theatrically. “After you, my friend.”

Jeremy stared out at a beautiful space. Four faces stared back at him.

A quartet of smiles.

A different silence- the sudden, percussive hush of conversation brought to a sharp halt. His nose filled with the aroma of roasted meat. His eyes accommodated to yet another quality of light: scores of chandelier bulbs dimmed low. Monumental chandelier, a riot of crystal swags and pendants and orbs.

The fleshy smell was delicious.

Jeremy stepped inside.

The room was over twenty feet high, wide as a chateau ballroom, long as a yacht. Like the corridor, the walls were wood- burled walnut the color of hot cocoa, incandesced by layers of polish, sectioned into octagonal panels and embroidered with boisserie. Where the massive chandelier wasn’t crystal it was sterling silver. The ceiling plaster was vaulted and embellished by swirls and medallions. A dozen paintings- pastoral scenes- were suspended from wires hooked over stout crown moldings.

Twin swinging doors backed the room, and Laurent disappeared through one of them. Between the doors, a baronial sideboard fitted with brass mounts hosted a centerpiece teeming with white orchids.

Under the chandelier was a mirror-polished, Chippendale mahogany dining table trimmed in vanilla satinwood. Long enough to accommodate twenty, but set for six.

Half a dozen mirrored place settings. One chair on each side of the table was empty.

Arthur motioned Jeremy to the left and took the facing chair on the right. “My friends, our guest, Dr. Carrier.”

A quartet of polite mumblings.

Three men, one woman. One of the men was black. He, like the other males, was dressed in a good suit and an eloquent necktie. The woman wore a white knit dress and a string of spectacular, purplish black pearls the size of concord grapes.

All four were elderly. By his very presence, Jeremy was lowering the median age significantly.

Where’s the children’s table?

He tried to take in as many details as possible without seeming rude. The paintings appeared French. All were housed in intricately carved frames and biased toward the saccharine: lush forests, honeyed sunlight, gamboling fauns, tender-breasted, vacant-eyed women captured in stunned repose.

Extra chairs, upholstered in raspberry silk, were positioned along the walls, as were a quartet of smaller sideboards. White marble columns supported exquisitely painted Chinese vases. Decorative tables expertly situated were festooned with marquetry; a glass étagère held jade carvings. Jeremy knew something about antiques; his long-suffering paternal grandmother spent much of her pension on a few quality Georgian pieces. These looked better than anything Gram had collected. What had happened to Gram’s pieces…?

No one spoke. The old people kept smiling at him. He half expected a pat on the head. Smiling back, he continued to take in details. A bower of three dozen red roses adorned the table. The mirrored place settings were glass hectagons, bordered in platinum. Each hosted pure white bone china of a simple, graceful design, an assortment of heavy, sterling utensils, ruby-colored linen napkins slipped into gilded rings, cut-crystal glasses for water, red and white wines, and much taller, long-stemmed repoussé silver goblets with glass insets.

Six settings, five goblets.

To the right of Jeremy’s plate was a simple champagne flute- clunky, cheap, it could have come from a discount chain.

Membership had its privileges…

Arthur had begun to speak, was gesticulating for emphasis. “… indeed nice to infuse some new blood into our grayed gathering.”

Appreciative chuckles.

“Jeremy, let me introduce this band of miscreants.” Arthur indicated the farthest of the two people sitting on Jeremy’s side of the table. A white-bearded man with eyes so blue that even at a distance they sparked like gas jets. “Professor Norbert Levy.” Arthur named a prominent Eastern university.

Levy was ruddy, heavy in the jowls, with a full head of unruly, wavy hair. He wore a wide-lapeled, charcoal tweed suit, a tattersall button-down shirt, a butterscotch cravat tied in a beefy Windsor knot.

“Professor,” said Jeremy.

Levy saluted and grinned. “Professor emeritus. In plain talk, I’ve been put out to pasture.”

Arthur said, “Norbert built their engineering department from scratch.”

“More like I scratched a few backs,” said Levy.

The woman sitting between the engineer and Jeremy placed a hand on her breast. The black pearls clinked. “A sudden paradigm shift to modesty, Norbert? I don’t know if my heart can take the shock.”

“Anything to keep you awake, Tina,” said Norbert Levy.

Arthur said, “Her eminence, Judge Tina Balleron, formerly of the superior court.”

“And now of the golf course,” said the woman in a smoky voice. She had the paper-bag complexion and dangerously freckled hands to back up the assertion of eighteen holes a day, was lean and strong-boned, with short wavy hair dyed champagne blond. She wore no jewelry other than the pearls, but they were enough. She’d probably been a stunner a few decades ago. Even now, sagging, wattled skin failed to obscure the determined line of her jaw. She murmured rather than spoke, and Jeremy found that surprisingly seductive. Her eyes were clear, dark, amused.

“Superior court,” said Professor Emeritus Norbert Levy. “The question is, superior to what? Is there an inferior court, dear?”

Judge Tina Balleron made a low, throaty sound. “Given the quality of attorneys nowadays, I’d say there are plenty.”

Arthur shifted his glance to his side of the table, eyed the man farthest down. “Edgar Marquis.”

No professional designation; as if the name said it all.

Marquis appeared to be the oldest of the group- well into his eighties. Shrunken and hairless with blue-veined, papery skin, he seemed nearly devoured by his clothing. His face sat low on his shoulders, pitched forward, as if deprived of the support provided by a neck. His upper lip protruded like that of a turtle’s beak. The suit was a black silk shadow stripe. Satin-covered buttons trimmed the sleeves. Jeremy had only seen those on tuxedos. Marquis’s shirt was pearl gray, his skinny tie the cheerful red of oxygenated blood. An old dandy, Edgar Marquis.

He also appeared to be asleep, and Jeremy began to glance away. Then Marquis crooked a crescent of skin where his eyebrows should’ve been and winked.

“Edgar,” said Tina Balleron, “was a rare example of coherence and judgment at the aptly named Foggy Bottom.”

“The State Department,” said Arthur, as if explaining to a schoolchild.

Everyone smiled again, including Marquis. Not amusement-let’s-get-comfortable smiles. All of them working at amiable.